Wiring
by on rooftops
Summary: He thinks that if anything was going to be enough to ease the way he's feeling, it would be the way Simon sighs when he steps away. — Simon/Kieren - post season two


This is cross-posted at AO3. It's post-season 2 so there are spoilers for all episodes to date. Let me know if you see anything that needs a warning!

It's mostly just a character-study/angsty reflection thing.

* * *

wiring

Kieren has found that he has an amazing capacity for forgiveness. He doesn't understand it, exactly. He sits on his grave in the rain and thinks that forgiveness, the whole generous attitude of it, is a bit too biblical. Not biblical the way Vicar Oddie preached it, all rage and resurrection, but biblical in the childhood sense. Biblical like Jesus welcoming lost sheep and children and prostitutes.

But Kieren is not like Jesus. He doesn't want to be like him. Hadn't he said as much to Simon, just two weeks ago?

This forgiveness thing confuses him. He has a right to hold so many grudges, but most of them slip away easily. He doesn't even need to fight them; he would need to fight to keep them. He just thinks of his father's blurred face in the cemetery, of Philip clutching the stuffed tiger at the funeral, the sharp gut-slurring flashback of Jem with her gun pointed at him in the market, and he's forgiven them

Is that forgiveness, though? Is it really? Because sometimes it seems to him that it's not that he's forgiven anyone, just that they've all settled their debts.

He wouldn't be thinking about this at all, except that the thought of Amy sometimes brings him to his knees. It's not sorrow or grief that gets him on the ground. He swallows those up and stays standing. It's a knife all along his spine, a rage that won't let him go.

He's angry at Maxine Martin. Of course he is. But that is an outward anger, a sensible rage, and it is being dealt with by people who are not him. If she ever comes to Roarton again, well. Maybe then Kieren will feel towards her what he is currently feeling towards Amy.

Towards Amy, who is dead. Twice dead. Extra dead.

It does not make sense, and he recognizes that. Nor is it fair. He has no right to be angry at her. She didn't want to die. Even if she had orchestrated her second death, he would have had no right. He, especially.

But even though he knows he is wrong, knows that Amy's death is not a thing he should get angry at her over, he's still sitting, kicking his heels against we loved to hear, and feeling like hot stabby rage all over.

Maybe his anger is to do with his personal version of forgiveness. Debt settling. His inner bookie is upset because he never got to settle his debts with Amy. It's resentment manifesting as rage. Because what Amy did for him, from the moment they rose to the second she bled out (and the fact that there was blood inside of Amy to get out of her and kill her is a very important thing that no one is saying much about), was so monumental. She changed his life. Second life. Death.

She was his best friend. He doesn't think BDFF anymore because they don't live forever, it turns out. Or she didn't. Who the fuck knows about him.

She forgave him about Simon. She loved him more than she loved her imagined future and he knows that's not a small thing. She left him, he reminds himself, and feels a surge of calm, but then she came back, brought Simon, brought facts wrapped in too-bright extremist craziness, and he remembers Amy eating sheep brains.

He remembers Amy eating human brains, too.

He remembers Amy rising. He remembers her laughing. Hey, I know you.

He remembers the look on her face, when he told her his last living thought was one of relief.

Kieren remembers Amy calling him moregeous. Again and again, when he couldn't look in mirrors.

His hands are shaking. He stuffs them in his coat pockets and looks at the yellow tape around his grave and tries to feel anything other than anger. Anything at all. He would give his right hand to feel the gasping sort of sorrow he felt at her funeral. He wouldn't mind feeling nothing if it meant that he stopped wanting to dig Amy up just to yell at her. Maybe shake her around a bit.

He doesn't understand, is the thing, and he is used to understanding himself. He has never doubted himself. Whatever else he's done, whatever else he's been, whatever insecurities he's dealt with and whatever horrors he's dealt, he has always—with the possible exception of the rabid period, but even then he was convinced of himself—known what it is he wants to do.

He slips off his gravestone and swings his bad leg up over the tape. He squeezes stiffness out of his fingers as he heads down the roll of the graveyard. He keeps his gaze straight ahead. He doesn't want to see Amy's grave.

Simon is walking down the road toward him. Toward the graveyard, probably, but his face does that awkward smile thing they're all doing these days, the stretching of his mouth that looks like a wince, and he stops to wait for Kieren.

"Been to see Amy?" Simon asks.

Kieren shakes his head. He doesn't stop, and Simon glances over his shoulder at the graveyard, hesitating a moment, and then hurries to catch up to Kieren.

"What's going on, Kier?"

Kieren shrugs. He doesn't look at Simon, and Simon, being unused to this, catches on to his hand. Kieren doesn't shake him off, but when Simon stops and tries to get him to stop, he does pull away, continuing in the direction of his house.

"Kieren," Simon says, and it's his Twelfth Disciple voice, the one that gets under Kieren's skin and scratches against his bones, sharpened fingernails on a blackboard.

He stops and turns. "I," he says, and there are a thousand things that stumble over themselves in his head, a thousand ways he could explain how he's feeling, and all he can manage is, "am not good at grieving."

Simon rocks back on his heels. He has his hands in the pockets of his coat. He looks surprised, has looked surprised since the funeral, a strange wrinkling to his forehead that wasn't always there before but has been there since. "We didn't expect to have to mourn her," he says, and it's a concession of some sort, but it sounds too palliative to relate to how Kieren's feeling.

"Even if I had expected it." Kieren shakes his head. "I wouldn't be able to do this well."

"It's not really something you want to be good at, though, is it?"

"I should be better than," Kieren starts walking again. This conversation is an ocean and he's just about to jump ship. "I just mean. She was my best friend," and he's reminding himself more than Simon, reminding himself that he should not feel angry at her because of this reason, among the very many others.

"I know that." Simon doesn't sound frustrated, exactly, but he does sound like he remembers that they've turned this corner before.

"I know you know that. I know that. I just…do you think she knew that?"

They're outside of the bungalow. Simon stops, looks at Kieren. "Of course she knew that. You told her you loved her just as often as she said it to you. You aren't." Simon rolls his pale lips together. "I would not say that you are an open book. But you aren't difficult to read, Kieren. When you're feeling something for someone, it's not as if you hide it."

Kieren looks at the bungalow rather than at Simon. The ULA groupies still hang around sometimes, but they've been different with Simon since the day Amy died. Less in awe of him, more afraid of him, Kieren thinks. The bungalow may still be a safe house, but only as a last resort.

There's a light on in the front room tonight, though, meaning that someone is probably in there. He doesn't want to see them. They've been looking at him strangely, just as they've been looking at Simon strangely. He's never liked them, of course, but recently he's even more unsure of them. At least he used to believe they trusted Simon.

"I'm going home," Kieren tells him.

"Hey." Simon reaches out and grips his wrist, fingers strong over the sleeve of his jacket. "It's hard. I know. Just," he draws Kieren toward him, and Kieren goes slowly, reeled in heavily, "don't forget that I'm here, okay?"

Kieren lets Simon kiss him. He kisses him back; they're both rain-wet and tired, but the kiss is slow and easy.

"I won't," Kieren promises, and he thinks that if anything was going to be enough to ease the way he's feeling, it would be the way Simon sighs when he steps away.

"I'll see you tomorrow?" Simon asks. He is always asking. Kieren nods.

"Be," _careful_, he wants to say, meaning with the ULA encampment in the living room, but Simon doesn't admit anything's different, and he wouldn't listen, and so instead Kieren winds up saying, "okay," and Simon's face winces with its smile again, and he kisses Kieren quickly.

"You too."

:::

The pinprick pupils are easy, the very tip of a brush dipped in black paint. But then the irises, the rest of the eyes—the color is difficult to get. It's not white, precisely, the lack of blood beneath the lids, the opaquely missing pigment. Kieren has examined his eyes in the mirror and cannot find a color that fits them.

Jem is lying on his bed, watching as he mixes paints. She occasionally makes a noise, like she's going to say something about one or another of the colors he does manage, but she never finishes her thoughts. He's grateful. He doesn't want to know what she thinks of his eyes, of Simon's and Amy's; he knows how he sees them, and that is the color he wants.

They're a little bit blue. But all his blues are too vibrant.

"What I need," he says, "is a blue that's dead. Dead blue."

Jem's face is briefly shocked, and then she smiles. "Whole new palette for—PDS sufferers? You'd get a fortune."

Kieren considers this, adding a bit of robin's egg to the yellow-white swirl he's produced so far. "Maybe that's what I'll do now. Make paints." His plan is something else, slippery and difficult to grasp. But pretending that his future could be as simple as the chemistry of paint colors is comforting.

Or it would be, if his sister would let him believe it. She rolls onto her back. "You'll never do anything that normal."

"Yeah? What'll I do?"

The color's almost there, but it's still missing something. Kieren twists it onto the canvas anyway. It might dry right.

He's had a difficult time being patient with painting recently.

Jem says, "Something big, Kier. Ask Simon. He'll tell you."

"What do you mean?"

"Just that he thinks you're amazing. He probably has plans for you."

Kieren glances at her. She's staring up at his ceiling, face flat. "Do you not like Simon?"

"He's fine." Jem stands and comes to his shoulder. "That's good."

"Yeah? I'm still not sure about the color."

"It's good," Jem says again. "Lifelike."

Kieren twirls his brush in the cup of water. "Not what I'm going for, really."

"You know what I mean," she pauses on her way out the door to add, "dickhead."

"I know." He looks at his painting. It looks like him, he thinks. It's pale all over. The colors are closer to right than anything he's managed so far, than much of what he had done when he was alive. Back then changing colors was a form of art. Now it seems like a denial.

:::

They're awkward around each other. He's not sure why, if it's because they're in his parents' house, or if it's because the moments they spent together before were brief, shoved between Simon's proselytizing and the Give Back Scheme and Amy. It's not a bad awkward, it's just the two of them sitting on his bed, a foot of space between them, and Kieren unsure of what Simon is thinking.

Simon is looking at the self-portrait. "Amazing." He stands and leans in close. "This is," he glances over his shoulder. Kieren forces himself to meet his gaze. Simon's eyes are a bit bluer than Kieren's, his pupils smoothly shaped. "Really, Kieren, it's unbelievable, what you can do."

Kieren ducks his head. "It's just—what I know how to do."

"And that's not amazing to you? Because you are, you know." Kieren leans back on his hands and starts to shake his head, but Simon continues, "At this. Don't," and then he's right there, bringing up a whole new type of awkward with his breath in Kieren's face and his lips so close to but not touching, "don't deny this one thing."

Kieren doesn't want to talk about it. Simon's face is too near for talking. Kieren kisses him, easy, easy, and Simon kisses him back.

There's an incredible simplicity to the two of them like this. Kieren has never experienced anything like it. Simon slides his hands beneath Kieren's shirt and Kieren is not concerned over anything to do with Simon.

He's not thinking, really, is trying very hard not to think, but when he does think, he thinks of the last time someone's hands were against his chest, how sweaty those hands were, how fast his heart was beating, how everything was a fight, how everything was blurry and tasted of alcohol and backwash. Everything tastes different, now; Kieren can barely taste anymore, he's unsure whether the faint taste of mint is remembered or real. But he knows this is a type of fall, the way Simon pulls his shirt over his head. He knows this is not a fight. And it's unloyal to Simon and to Rick, to compare the two of them, and he doesn't want to, and he loved Rick in a very real deep sort of way, but this, this? It's different.

_Stop_, he tells himself, with his hands against Simon's cold stomach. _Stop thinking_.

And then Simon pulls away. He looks down. "Sorry," he says to Kieren's knees.

"What?" Kieren drops his hands; Simon had backed up enough that Kieren was only notionally touching him. He rests his arms on his jeans so his scars aren't visible and looks up at Simon. "What?" he repeats, after Simon's breathing evens out.

"My," Simon rubs his mouth, a raw pink with friction from Kieren's, "my back." He shakes his head, stands up straighter and meets Kieren's gaze. "You haven't seen it, have you?"

Kieren holds out his wrists again. An offering.

"It's not like that." Simon chews on his lip, reaches up and starts undoing buttons on his shirt. "You know me, it's not like that." He shrugs out of his shirt, drops it on the ground, and swings lurchily on his heels.

His back is a wound. Kieren can't swallow.

He doesn't want to touch it, but Simon's shoulders are so straight. Waiting.

It's a narrow canyon down his spine, deep. Intentional. The edges of skin are ridged and hard.

Kieren remembers dissecting frogs in school. He remembers the slices they were instructed to make, diagrams in lab books that resemble the dark scar down Simon's back.

The skin around it is so pale, smooth. Kieren doesn't want to think of it as perfect, Simon's back to either side of the scar, but he does. He lets his fingers drift to the sides, allows them to draw patterns on the softness there, but he doesn't look away from the line down his spine.

Simon had told him that he was a part of the trial for the medication. Kieren had not understood what that meant.

Hands on hips, he draws Simon back to him. He presses his forehead against Simon's back. Simon shivers.

"You're not ashamed," Kieren says, and he knows Simon isn't. Simon is hesitant and anxious, but he can't be ashamed about this.

"No," he answers.

"Good." Kieren lets him go, pushes further back onto his bed. "Because you shouldn't be."

"I am embarrassed," Simon admits. He sits down again, his back to Kieren, and Kieren reaches out and touches his shoulder. He traces blind drawings there.

"You didn't know what was going to happen. You didn't know anything. You had just been rabid, you weren't sane. What they did," Kieren says, with a sudden and honest conviction, "it was illegal."

"If there had been laws about us then," Simon concedes.

Kieren's hand stills, flat against Simon's shoulder. He tugs and Simon gives, falling onto his back. He shifts so his head is on Kieren's pillow, and Kieren, squished against the wall with his knees to his chin, looks at him, all the white skin of him, before stretching out and kissing him again.

The angle is different and new but they're the same. Kieren is there for Simon in whatever way he can be, hands on his sides and mouth on his mouth. He only barely wonders what it would be like to have all of Simon on him while alive, with nerve endings that work the way living people's do, and then the very physical presence of Simon beneath him finally makes him stop thinking.

:::

Simon sleeps on his stomach. Kieren sits on the edge of his bed beside him, one leg bent awkwardly beneath the other, and paints Simon's shoulder. Simon's eyelids flutter with dreams as Kieren's brush smoothes a pale color onto his skin; it matches nearly perfectly.

He cleans his brush and dips it in a light brown, paints a line alongside the scar over Simon's spine. He mirrors the line on the other side, arcs it outwards and adds wings of branches. The green color he chooses is bright. He curves leaves and leaves over Simon's shoulders and the very top of the scar, blooming his back with color.

When he sees it in the mirror later, Simon kisses Kieren hard and abruptly, a smash of lips that answers a few easily swallowed words.

:::

Kieren goes to the cemetery again. The fresh-turned earth of Amy's grave makes his stomach clench. It's still too new, he thinks, and it will never not be too new. He stands in front of her grave and thinks about the color gray and how bland it is. Amy must have hated it.

There are no words left. He's thought them all, if he hasn't said them. He's raged in his head over her, to her. He loves her, loved her, knows her, knew her. He is sorry and sad and angry, and it's difficult because Amy would have understood his anger, he's almost sure. She would have taken it all in hand.

He rests a hand over the curve of her tombstone and squeezes. It's as much of a thank you as he can manage, and not nearly as much of one as Amy deserved. But he thinks she knew; she loved him, after all, and she understood him and she did not believe, no matter what, that he deserved to be alone.

For that and for everything else, Kieren knows he owes her whatever he can make of his second life.

It's a way to settle debts, but it's also a way to keep going.


End file.
